


born of salt

by princerai



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Beach House, Escape, M/M, Parental Abuse, Sibling Incest, Suicide Attempt, recovery from abuse, thor protects his little brother and loves him with all his heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princerai/pseuds/princerai
Summary: Thor sees the marks of what this life has wrought upon his brother, and together they flee into the waters.





	born of salt

**Author's Note:**

> im just really into ... Escape pieces right now. where they get away from Bad Shit and they recover and they get better. another sort of personal piece, not wholly comprehensive. listen to the warnings in the tags, although i don't think much of it is Explicit.

Though this old porcelain tub is wide, though it can hold both him and his brother when they settle in heart to back, Loki’s gangly limbs still hang out the sides when he spreads out like a beached starfish. 

Water drips down his wrists, trickling to the tips of his fingers and filling the cracks in the tile floor. By all means, he should have taken to drying off ages ago. He lies in clear, trembling water, vanilla soap long dissipated. The broken window above sits open to let in the call of evening gulls. 

Salt lines the red in his arms, scraping the delicate healing flesh. It was stupid to go out to sea with his skin bared, but some pains are bearable in exchange for the experiences that accompany them. 

The thin walls rattle like hollow bones; Thor is back, slamming the front door shut. Loki can picture it, him kicking his foot back, arms heavy with groceries because they realized runaways still need to eat something besides cereal and milk scraping the bottom of the jug. 

Thor brings with him another salt, sweat, heavy on the air. It still tastes of the ocean.

Loki listens to the distant thud of cabinets, of the fridge, clicking shut, listens to his brother swear when something topples out of a bag and onto the floor. 

Once, Thor promised him an escape. Promised from the shadows of a closet, black criss-crossing over his golden face. Promised through trembling lips, salty as the ocean air, just as wet.

Loki can still taste the tang of his tears. 

Thor promised him, over and over, in that same closet, listening to the thumping boots outside, the demands that they come out of hiding—

Thor always keeps his promises. 

He promised to be a good big brother. He promised to stay by his side. 

Then they grew older. They understood their hearts, started listening to messages spoken between beats— to the desire in those messages. 

He promised to be slow. He promised to let Loki come first. He promised that there would be nobody else but Loki. 

And then, when Loki’s heart hurt too much, and he took matters into his own hands, into a sharp blade, when he wasn’t thinking, when he needed relief and he climbed into the tub because he thought it would be easier— 

He promised to get Loki to the hospital on time. 

He promised, running calloused fingers along the gauze winding in wild loops around his wrists— he’d get him out of that house. 

And he did. 

They have an uncle. Starts with an L. Loki can’t remember the whole thing. 

He hates their dad with a burning passion, the sort of burn that makes a man do stupid things simply to spite the figure of their loathing. 

Thor suspects there was an affair with Mom and that it took place when things were dicey with dad, as if things were ever actually peaceful and ... uncle L was too glad to give them a place to stay. Or so Thor says. 

Loki didn’t question it. He doesn’t question much if it comes from Thor. 

They’ve spent so much of their time in the ocean. It’s their ocean now. They lay beneath the surf, letting it crash over them. Their backs grow hot against the soft yielding sand. Thor’s fists shape the ground, crumbling between his fingers. Loki’s hands hang over his head in surrender to the water’s push and pull. If he closes his eyes he can almost feel hands closing around his ankles and pulling. 

Saltwater is rough, scrapes away at stone for years and years til cliffs stand looming and casting black shadows over that which shaped it. Thor wonders aloud to Loki sometimes if layers of him have been stripped away by these waters, that he might be closer to being something new, that he might be himself instead of the creature he had to be to protect Loki. 

Loki is good at lying. He taught Thor to lie. Thor didn’t like lying. 

Thor had to lie for the both of them. Lie to their father, because he would never lie. Because nobody would believe crazy Loki and the rusty brown lines carving valleys in his skin. 

They had to go out together that night and drop off homework. Loki left something with a tutor that Thor coaxed him into seeing. Something something, a shitty excuse that would sound as such coming from anybody but Thor— and so he told his last lie to their father, and it was into the truck, and they never looked back. 

Neither of them went to the shore as children. Loki is glad for it. Makes this place shiny and new. It’s all theirs to claim. Nothing to wipe off. No grime nor dust nor the blood of a memory to clean off of the creaky doors. 

It’s the opposite for Thor. Loki can see the way Thor’s eye wanders. How he stares out the kitchen window too long, looking out onto the shore for something that’s his. 

He has yet to really call this place his own. He throws himself to the waters and rolls round in it like he might eventually carve out a space for himself in the wild foam. 

But when his eye returns to Loki, his shoulders sink, and the firm line of his lip softens. He finds his space. 

He’s plagued by that same lost look that wears at the window when he finally comes into the bathroom, salt clinging to his skin, born of sweat and of ocean. 

He looks at Loki, and he’s okay. 

The water isn’t bloody. 

Loki pulls in his long limbs, and shows there’s space for Thor. 

His clothes pile up by the door, carelessly left open, as he takes that space, and makes it his, just as much as Loki is his.


End file.
